Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Peter’s gin and tonic tasted like sadness and regret. But all gin and tonics had a certain edge of melancholy. He’d never met anyone whose drink of choice was a gin and tonic that wasn’t on or should be on an antidepressant.
“I’ve just come from your mother, and you are officially wrapped,” his father said, sliding onto the barstool next to his. He caught the bartender’s eye. “Scotch, please. Neat.” Arthur folded his hands on the top of the bar and studied Peter for a second. “You don’t look very happy for a man who just finished work three days early.”
Peter drained the remainder of his gin and tonic and pushed it toward the bartender for another one.
He wasn’t happy. He was somewhere at the bottom of a pit of sadness that he felt he’d never be able to crawl out of. Everything after Saturday morning replayed as hazy memories. He’d been wandering through life in a daze, barely having the presence of mind to ask if he could push and wrap his scenes early so he could go to London. His mother wouldn’t outright agree to it, but she did say when she was satisfied they’d gotten good enough footage for his last pages, she’d release him. So he’d funneled what little energy he had into finishing work so he could get the hell out of Crane Cove.
“I’m tired.”
It wasn’t a lie, but there was a mountain of omission hanging in the air. Peter hadn’t slept much since Saturday. His hotel bed was too big, too foreign, and didn’t smell anything like Sybil. He’d taken all of his stuff from her house on an impulse. If she’d been home, he would have taken it as a sign they were supposed to talk it out, but she wasn’t, so he loaded his clothes, his book, and his toothbrush into his rental car.
He hadn’t heard from her since Saturday, either. She hadn’t been on set Monday or today, which was fine for production because Maddy had been feeling better and needed Sybil less lately, but was hell on his nerves. As much as he wanted to reach out, he couldn’t keep crossing oceans for her if she wouldn’t cross town for him.
The bartender passed Arthur his scotch and replaced Peter’s drink with a fresh one. Arthur picked up his glass, sniffed, and then sipped.
“A weary heart will make you feel that way,” Arthur said with all the wisdom of a smelly hermit who lives on top of a mountain and has a concerning amount of devotees.
“I don’t want to be weary, I want to be happy. I thought—” Peter cut himself off and sighed.
Arthur nudged him in the side. “You’re forgetting that you’re talking to the former president of the Abject Piners Club. Tell me what’s on your mind. Burdens are easier when shared.”
“Jordy proposed to his girlfriend this weekend.” He took the lime from the rim of the glass and squeezed it into his drink until it was rind and pulverized flesh, then he dropped its corpse into the glass. “I was holding on to the ring for him because he was worried Annie would find it, except Sybil found it, thought it was for her, freaked out, said I don’t respect her boundaries, that I push too hard, and she didn’t know if she saw a future with me.” He sipped his drink and winced as the piney liquor bit him. “It hurt like hell and it caught me off guard and I walked out.”
“Do you see a future with her?” Arthur asked gently.
Peter watched the carbonation from the tonic water latch onto the lime like bubbly parasites while he contemplated a question he already knew the answer to.
“I want a future with her. I want to grow old with her. But if she doesn’t want that…I don’t know what to do.”
“From the time I met your mother until we got together, it was about—” Arthur squinted as he tried to remember dates more than thirty years in the past and do the appropriate math. “Fourteen years? Or maybe fifteen? She wasn’t ready for the kind of forever I wanted with her when we met. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was to wait for her to catch up to me. But, if I’d pushed, if I’d tried to force her into what I wanted before she was ready, we would have failed spectacularly.” He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “My two cents, if my opinion is even worth that, is you give her the time and space she needs. If you want to wait from afar, let her know, but you need to let her figure out what she wants so when she decides, it’s her choice alone without any pressure from you.”
“I don’t know if I can face her without begging her to love me.”
“You don’t have to face her. Write her a letter. Probably a better idea anyway. Gives you both space to process your emotions.”
The weight of his misery was too much, and he leaned against his father, resting his head on the shoulder that had borne so many of his tears.
“Fifteen years?” Peter asked quietly. “It’s already been twelve. I only have to survive another three.”
The early November wind bit at Sybil’s tear-stained cheeks and tangled her hair. In her hands she held two checks that represented enough money to sign the lease on the empty storefront in front of her. Her dream had never been so close and mattered so little.
“Is there a reason you’ve been standing here for the last twenty minutes?” Mallory asked, standing next to her. She pulled her coat tight around her and rubbed her arms. “It’s fucking freezing.”
“I can’t even tell,” Sybil said weakly and handed her the checks. “I don’t know what to do with these anymore.”
Mallory took the checks and let out a low whistle. “Wow. That is a chunk of change, babe. What do you mean you don’t know what to do with this?”
Sybil sniffed and gestured to the empty storefront. “I wanted to connect this space to Stardust and open a bookstore. But I don’t know anymore. I can’t get excited about finding the money to do the renovations, to buy stock. It’s so much work, and I’m so tired.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Since I opened Stardust. The timing has never been quite right. Either the space hasn’t been available, or I didn’t have the money because something expensive always happens when I think it’s time.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I still don’t have all the money, but I thought if I could sign the lease, at least the space wouldn’t disappear from under me while I figured out the whole loan process.”
Mallory was quiet for a few moments, then asked, “How much money were you going to take out as a loan?”
“I haven’t crunched the numbers in a while, but somewhere around twenty or thirty thousand.”
Mallory nodded and studied the empty storefront. A strong gust whipped down the street, rustling the checks in her hands and blowing a leaf into her curly blond hair.
“What if,” Mallory began slowly, turning her head to look at Sybil, “I gave you the money?”
The wind must have distorted what she’d heard.
“Give me the money? What money?” Sybil asked. “You don’t have that kind of money.”
“Actually, I do. I have this older sister who nags me a lot about saving my money and she doesn’t think I listen to her, but I do. She also told me that I’m wasting my potential and she’s not wrong.” Mallory handed her back the checks. “I’ve saved about twenty-seven thousand dollars. I want to invest twenty thousand of that into our business.”
“ Our business?”
“Yes, our business,” Mallory confirmed, mocking Sybil’s tone. “If I’m going to put twenty down, I’m going to be a partner in this. And not a silent partner, either. You know I’m very loud.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Sybil warned her.
“I’m ready to give responsibility a try.” Mallory’s giant smile faltered when Sybil didn’t return it. “Is something else wrong?”
The sadness welled up inside her again and her bottom lip quivered as she tried to stop it from spilling over.
“He’s gone. He left.”
Sybil had planned on talking to Peter when she went to pick up her check from production. After five days of almost nonstop crying, she was ready and willing to admit that she had overreacted and she didn’t mean a lot of what she’d said. But when she’d arrived at the payroll office, there was a second check waiting for her from Peter: the balance of the coffee cart.
When she’d asked why he’d left it for her there, payroll told her that Peter had finished filming on Tuesday and had already left for London. He wanted to be sure she got her money, so he’d left it with them for her to pick up since he knew she’d be coming by for her other check.
“Oh, Sybil.” Mallory wrapped her arms around her sister and hugged her tightly. “Did he say anything?”
“No.” The first sob slipped out. “I f-fucked this up s-s-so bad, Mal. It’s all my—” Her words got stuck in her throat, trapped by the boulder of emotion blocking the way. She was finally able to force out, “Fault.”
“Let’s take you home before anyone catches you sobbing on the sidewalk,” Mallory said, curling an arm around Sybil’s waist and guiding her toward the parking area at the end of the street. “You have a reputation to uphold. Scary bitches don’t cry.”
The front door of the house was unlocked. Mallory ushered Sybil inside and hung her car keys next to the door.
Sybil took off her shoes, avoiding looking at the coat rack, like it was solely responsible for the last five miserable days of her life. She wanted to go up to her room to see if any weak whiffs of Peter’s scent could be pulled from his pillow.
Flowers on the coffee table caught her eye.
“Did you put those there?” she asked Mallory and pointed at the red roses.
Mallory shook her head. “They weren’t there when I left.”
Like she was moving through quicksand, Sybil slowly walked over to the coffee table, each step making her stomach sink lower.
There was an envelope tucked under the vase with her name written on it in a mix of print and cursive she was extremely familiar with.
“Is it from Peter?”
Sybil nodded. She sat on the couch before opening the envelope, not having any faith in her legs to support her through the letter.
Sybil,
By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to London. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye in person, but I’m trying to be less pushy and give you the space you need to process what happened on Saturday.
Even though I’m leaving, I don’t want to stay away forever. I love you, without hope or expectation. If I have to wait for you for the rest of my life, that’s fine. I can do that. It’s always been you since the first instant I saw you in that dusty bookshop, and I don’t see that changing. When I’m with you, my heart knows it can rest and I feel, for the first time, calm.
I know you’re worried that we can’t work. That my life is so big that you’ll get lost in it. That I’ll get bored of you once the chase is over, that I’ll want to move on when the butterflies are gone and I find out that you sleep with your mouth open (you do, by the way). But my idea of a perfect day is one where we curl up on the couch with cups of coffee and our books, and listen to the rain while we read. I would take a million of those slow, quiet days if you’d give them to me.
I love you. I want to figure out how we can make a future together work. I am willing to stand still and wait for you to catch up if you’re willing to close the distance.
Whenever you’re ready, I’m waiting.
All my love,
Pete r
Tears fell on the letter like raindrops, the ink spreading outward in circles. Her chest was tight, and her heart felt like it was being used as a professional boxer’s speed bag.
“What does it say?” Mallory asked.
Sybil handed her the letter, fighting for breath while her body fought to cry.
“I hate this. Being in love hurts . How do people walk around like this every day? I feel like I’m having a fucking heart attack.”
Mallory didn’t answer her question. Instead she snapped her fingers in front of Sybil’s face.
“Snap out of it. I need your attention. And I need you to not think about your answers. Just whatever you want to say, say it. Do you love Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be with him?”
“Yes.”
“When do you want to fix the mess you made?”
“Right now.”
“Fantastic.” Mallory set the letter down on the coffee table and pulled her phone out of her pocket.
Sybil used a throw blanket as a tissue. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out what flight he’s on to London…Fuck. It’s taking off in thirty minutes. Is there another flight tonight?” She touched her screen a few more times. “Okay, so if you want to leave before tomorrow, there’s a few flights with connections, but I’m personally a bigger fan of a nonstop because it’s less hassle. There is one out of Portland, but it doesn’t leave until to morrow.”
“Slow down…What?”
Mallory tapped her screen, not bothering to look up. “I’m booking you a flight. You’re going to London to get your man back.”
“Mal—”
Her sister tossed her phone down and held her hands up. “Too late. It’s done. And you can’t tell me it’s too much money, because I have a lot of miles.” She jumped to her feet and started toward the stairs. “Where’s your passport? It’s still valid, right?”
“Shouldn’t you have asked that before you booked the ticket?” Sybil shouted after her, running to catch up.
“There’s such a thing as emergency passport services. There’s an office in Seattle. We could make it work.”
“Who’s going to run Stardust? I can’t drop everything.” Sybil followed Mallory into her room. “Are you listening to me?”
Mallory dug out a suitcase from under her bed. “I can take care of Stardust. We’re partners now, remember? And you won’t be gone for more than a few days. It’ll be fine.”
“Oh my god.” Sybil sat down on the edge of the bed, her head swimming. “I’m going to London.”